the twisted path

“Inside the passages were lit with red torch-light, and the elf-guards sang as they marched along the twisting, crossing, and echoing paths. These were not like those of the goblin-cities: they were smaller, less deep underground, and filled with a cleaner air. In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood.”

how much longer do I have to waithow many more nights do I have to stay awake to see youto meet you

Summary: Your whole life has been plagued by the sight of gray: cold and lonely and unbearably plain; you thought you were the exception to a system of fate and destiny that brought two people together. That is, until your favorite Kpop group undergoes their first international tour. Pairing: Jimin | ReaderGenre: Fluff; Idol/Fan AU + Soulmate AU (the one in which colors get brighter and brighter than closer you are and fade into gray when they’re too far) Word Count: 11,869Author’s Note: This was an idea I originally had for Hopeless Hearts, but it didn’t feel right in comparison to what Hopeless Hearts has become now. I knew I wanted to write something for Jimin again so this idea came back to me with more details and it just felt… right.

ALSO thank you Katie aka @minsvga for reading my outline and basically letting me talk you through the entire plot and letting me update you whenever I hit different word counts.

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You always thought you were broken—a failed outcome of a nearly flawless structure that has bounded and tied two people together since the very creation of human beings. You had heard of those special cases, of people who just saw gray their entire lives no matter how many oceans they covered and no matter how far they traveled, no matter if they searched the deepest corners or sought out the tallest mountains. You’ve heard of people in which distance wasn’t the problem—it was just them. Their existence had been doomed from the moment they were born, to live their life in monotone quality. Quite literally too, in fact. Knowing that there would be no one waiting for them on the other side as they slowly ventured through, never knowing a sunset or a sunrise or the grass—their life like an old film, classic and hazy and left behind.

For the first seventeen years of your life, the thought of just not having a soulmate was something that you didn’t necessarily think too deeply about. Some of your friends were of equal level to you, basking in the gray plaguing your line of sight. Albeit, there were a small handful who caught glimpses of red and yellow and blue, all of which were tinged in gray, during the duration of high school. And then there were an even smaller handful who were immediately gifted with the sight of the rainbow right out of the gate—their soulmates are the ones they end up going to prom with or are in the running for best couple in the yearbook, or other varying degrees of gross shit like that.

At a young age, the idea and concept of a soulmate, the concept of forever, was far too grand and far too wide to understand or grasp entirely. It also just seemed much too gross for you to want to understand. The thought that there was someone out there made just for you? Preposterous.

For the first seventeen years of your life, you didn’t really care. And you knew there were many others like you who shared that same belief system. No one wanted to have to settle down too early.

But none of you understood the true gravity of what it would be like to finally find your soulmate and the sensation of experiencing something you had been deprived of your entire life—henceforth you continued not caring, not knowing what you were missing out on in spite of everyone gushing endlessly about it.

Finding one’s soulmate has always meant to be a personal experience, something that could never be replicated or repeated—for a soulmate is supposed to provide as a ‘one and only’ occurrence; something that people could talk about yet not understand unless one had also uncovered the discovery of what would follow upon meeting a soulmate.

For the first seventeen years of your life, the art of ignoring those type of conversations shared between parents and girls who thought they were better than anyone else gradually started to become second nature to you. Yes, you could grasp that meeting your soulmate was going to mark a momentous occasion in your life, but was it really that important? You were going to meet him eventually, so what was the point of rushing through everything?

ENTP: A comic book store. The International Space Station. Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.INTP: A museum at night. The Space Needle in Seattle. A telescope on an apartment rooftop.ENTJ: A game of chess in the park. Pike’s Peak. The head of a long dining table at Thanksgiving.INTJ: Physics and chemistry laboratories. Secret passageways in old buildings. A sealed vault.ENFP: A poetry slam. Ancient Aztec ruins. A room full of decorative, metal-framed mirrors.INFP: A window seat in a library. A small countryside chapel with stained glass windows. A canopy bed in a cluttered bedroom.ENFJ: Making snow angels in a park. A birthday party with lots of balloons. A pay-per-view telescope at the beach.INFJ: The Notre Dame Cathedral. Cloud watching on a grassy knoll. Watching the roe deer in the Hallerbos forest in Belgium.ESTP: An arcade. Hang gliding over the Grand Canyon. Labeling arteries in a cadaver lab.ISTP: On a motorcycle in the city at night. Sheer cliffs with waterfalls. Jigsaw puzzles by the fireplace.ESTJ: The labyrinth of Versailles. Rehearsing in an empty auditorium. The top of the Statue of Liberty.ISTJ: A subway station early in the morning. The archives of the Library of Congress. A well-worn path through twisted woods.ESFP: Snorkeling at a coral reef. Fashion week in New York. A performance of Shakespeare at The Globe Theater.ISFP: Botanical gardens. A blanket fort in the attic. The Santa Maria Cathedral in Florence, Italy.ESFJ: A picnic in a park with kites. A bustling marketplace with fresh food and flowers. Feeding lorikeets at an aviary.ISFJ: A petting zoo with baby goats. A meadow of wildflowers as far as the eye can see. Studying at a familiar coffee shop with a house band.

Author’s Notes: This was written for @revwinchester Birthday Challenge. My prompt was camp counselor. Italics indicate a flashback. I started writing this in January on Friday the 13th and my dash was flooded with Jared (and his floofy hair) from his Friday the 13th movie. I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I just went with it.

Sam was walking through the hall of the bunker, just gotten
back from his run. Unfortunately, he had
to cut his run short when he stepped funny on one of his regular running paths,
twisting his ankle a bit. He had walked
back to the bunker, trying to walk as easy as possible on his now throbbing
ankle.

He went to the kitchen, grabbing the ice pack from the
freezer and wrapping it around his ankle.
He figured it would be better in no time, since he knew what a broken or
fractured bone felt like, and this was no where near that bad.

Sam walked down the hall toward his room, quietly so that he
wouldn’t wake Dean. It was still early,
and he figured his brother was still zonked out.

“Ungg –“

Sam stopped, head cocking at the sound. Dean’s door was slightly ajar, and he figured
the sound had come from there.

At 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945, the bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” exploded approximately 500 meters above Nagasaki, Japan. It instantly killed an estimated 70,000 of the city’s population. Three days earlier, on Aug. 6, 1945, an American B-29 Superfortress bomber called Enola Gay dropped a uranium-235 bomb on Hiroshima, eventually killing at least 140,000 people. It was the first and only time nuclear weapons have been used. Their destructive power was unprecedented, incinerating buildings and people and leaving lifelong scars on survivors, not just physical but also psychological, and on the cities themselves. Days later, World War II was over.

On the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki and amid growing tension between Washington and North Korea, here’s a look back at that fateful event. (AP/Getty images)

Former business district of Nagasaki in Sept. 1945 where 18,000 hotels, office buildings and homes once stood before the total devastation of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped a month earlier. (Photo: Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

Remains of trolley car in foreground, 2 ½ miles from where the U.S.dropped an atomic bomb in Nagasaki, 1945 (Photo: Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Devastation left after an atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9 1945. No precise date is given for the photo, which was taken not long after the explosion. (Photo: U.S. Signal Corps/AP)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

The hospital at Nagasaki Medical College, located only 800 meters from ground zero, was destroyed when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city at the end of World War II on Aug. 9. 1945. Only the reinforced concrete buildings remain standing. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

This is the type of atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission and Defense Department said in releasing this photo in Washington, Dec. 6, 1960. The weapon, known as the ‘Fat Man’ type, is 60 inches in diameter and 128 inches long. The second nuclear weapon to be detonated, it weighed about 10,000 pounds and had a yield equivalent to approximately 20,000 tons of high explosive. (Photo: AP)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

August 1945 damage from the atomic bombing of the Japanese City of Nagasaki at the end of world war two. (Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

A Japanese civilian pushes his loaded bike down a path which has been cleared of the rubble. On either side of the path debris, twisted metal, and gnared tree stumps fill the area in Nagasaki on Sept. 13, 1945. This is in the center of the devasted area. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

The crew of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortress ‘Bockscar’, which dropped the atomic bomb ‘Fat Man’ on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Front row, left to right: flight engineer John D. Kuharek, gunner and assistant flight engineer Ray Gallagher, tail gunner Albert Dehart, radio operator Abe Spitzer, unknown. Back row, left to right: bombardier Raymond ‘Kermit’ Beahan, navigator James Van Pelt, co-pilot Charles Donald Albury, co-pilot Fred Olivi and pilot Major General Charles W. Sweeney. (Photo: FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

A young man lies on a mat with burns covering his body, after falling victim to the explosion of the atom bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, 1945. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

A child with her mother in Nagasaki on the morning after the dropping of the atomic bomb, Aug. 10, 1945. Both have received a rice dumpling from emergency supplies. They were 1.5 km southeast of the Epicenter. (Photo: Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

Smoke billows over the Japanese city of Nagasaki after an atomic bomb was dropped on the city Aug. 9, 1945. (Photo: Stringer/Reuters)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

Battered religious figures rest among the rubble of Nagasaki after the atomic bombing of the city by American armed forces on Aug. 9, 1945. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

Men who helped drop the second war-stopping atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, study a map of their objective shortly before the take off of the B-29 “77” which dropped the bomb on Aug. 9, 1945. Left to right: Capt. Theo J. Van Kirk, navigator, who also made flight aboard the ‘Enola Gay’ when it dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima; Major Sweeney, commanding officer of the 393 bomb squadron and pilot. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

View of the radioactive plume from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki City, as seen from 9.6 km away, in Koyagi-jima, Japan, Aug. 9, 1945. The U.S. B-29 superfortress Bockscar dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed ‘Fat Man,’ which detonated above the ground, on northern part of Nagasaki City just after 11am. (Photo: Hiromichi Matsuda/Handout from Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum/Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

General view in July 1946 of the Nagasaki Medical School in Japan. It was located at about one kilometer from where the American atomic bomb was dropped. The structure of the buildings held but debris and fallen trees are everywhere. One year after the explosion, the ruins of the bombing are still in evidence. The city, which is still radio-active, has been deserted by the survivors. (Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Only the reinforced concrete buildings of the Nagasaki Medical College hospital remain standing after the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Aug. 9, 1945. The hospital was located 800 meters from ground zero of the atomic bomb explosion. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

The shapes of a man and ladder on the wooden wall of a factory is seen about 4 km away from where the atomic bomb ‘Fat Man’ was dropped on an unknown day of August, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan. The areas shadowed by a man and ladder remained unburnt by the energy of the ‘Fat Man’ bomb dropped in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. (Photo: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

One building still stands in a cityscape devastated by the atom bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Source: Yahoo News Photo Staff

The flight crews of two planes go over planes for the dropping of the first atomic bombs. The middle-aged man in the center is Lt. Col. Payette. On the left, in the foreground in profile is Lt. Ralph Devore. The man looking over Payette’s shoulder is Major Chuck Sweeney. Sweeney commanded and Devore flew with the mission to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki. To the right in profile are Lts. Thomas Ferebee (in cap, with mustache) and Morris Jeppson, both of whom flew with the first mission to bomb Hiroshima. (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

In a great cave some miles within the edge of Mirkwood on its eastern side there lived at this time their greatest king. Before his huge doors of stone a river ran out of the heights of the forest and flowed on and out into the marshes at the feet of the high wooded lands. This great cave, from which countless smaller ones opened out on every side, wound far underground and had many passages and wide halls; but it was lighter and more wholesome than any goblin-dwelling, and neither so deep nor so dangerous. In fact the subjects of the king mostly lived and hunted in the open woods, and had houses or huts on the ground and in the branches. The beeches were their favourite trees. The king’s cave was his palace, and the strong place of his treasure, and the fortress of his people against their enemies.

[…] This was the bridge that led across the river to the king’s doors. The water flowed dark and swift and strong beneath; and at the far end were gates before the mouth of a huge cave that ran into the side of a steep slope covered with trees. There the great beeches came right down to the bank, till their feet were in the stream.

Inside the passages were lit with red torch-light, and the elf-guards sang as they marched along the twisting, crossing, and echoing paths. These were not like those of the goblin-cities; they were smaller, less deep underground, and filled with a cleaner air. In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.

A/N: Sorry that this took so long to complete, and I’m not too sure how I feel about it. I’m still a novice at writing so I hope it’s not too terrible! Thanks for reading.

Sakura,

I can’t say for sure when I’ll return, and I don’t know where exactly this journey will take me. I don’t know what realization I’ll come to by the end of this or if I’ll even be left with one. I’m unsure of a lot, which is why I’ve left in the first place. I need to see life through this new lens I’ve been given. The one thing I seem to be certain of though, is that you will always be there. Where I used to see that as an obstacle to overcome, I now find it a source of comfort. I’m grateful for that.

Sasuke

Sakura sits in her office the same day that Sasuke left to continue his journey of redemption. The surgery she’d performed that morning had gone well. The renowned medic knew that her emotions would have to be pushed aside while she was at work, yet still, Sasuke’s letter remained at the back of her mind throughout the entire procedure. In the three hours after she’d finished stitching the last suture, she’s read his letter to her over and over and over; it’s been burned into her memory at this point and she’s not sure what to make of it.

Situation 2: 2. i’ve been checking you out every time i see you jogging at the park and oh no what are you doing why are you coming over here?? + Quote 15: 15. “I thought this was going to be much easier than it actually is.”

Stiles may have had a problem. May. And, of course, by may he meant that he most definitely had a problem and it was progressively getting worse.

It had all started three months prior when he had started to frequent the local public park directly across the street from the sheriff’s station where he usually ate lunch. With a gaping four hour hole between his morning history class and his afternoon forensics class, he had decided to start bringing his dad a salad or a veggie burger for lunch.

He always made sure that he spared a few minutes to snoop around his dad’s office for any contraband junk food, checking every nook and cranny from between the couch cushions to under his dad’s desk. He usually rooted out a few Twinkies, which he promptly threw into the trash can, and a couple packages of Reese’s, which he always pocketed for himself.

It was only after he performed his search for junk food that he would hand over whatever lunch he had made for his old man who, without fail, rolled his eyes at him every time. The rest of the officers in the department thought it was hilarious. The Sheriff? Not so much. He just wanted to eat his candy bars in peace.

He always packed himself a lunch as well so he could sit and eat lunch with his dad, hoping to show some solidarity by eating whatever healthy meal his dad ate. Considering how high his dad’s cholesterol levels and blood pressure was, he didn’t want to tempt him by flaunting a nice juicy, beef burger in front of him while he munched on veggie burgers and carrot sticks.

They spent their time swapping stories about how their day had been so far, occasionally gossiping about who had gotten arrested for shoplifting or yet another DUI. Mrs. Martin was an incorrigible kleptomaniac and Mr. Lahey was the unofficial town drunk, the latter of which proving that the Sheriff was right to remove his sons from his custody a decade ago.

Deputy Graeme would occasionally poke her head in to inform the Sheriff that he had another conference to go to the following week or had a meeting with the mayor, but most of the time she darkened the doorway to tell them to stop gossiping. Stiles would just roll his eyes and ask how her daughter was doing at Berkeley, smiling innocently at the deputy until she cracked a smile and claimed her daughter was doing great.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the half hour allotted for the Sheriff’s lunch break eventually passed. And so, Stiles had to leave to let his dad get back to protecting and serving the good people of Beacon County.

Typically, after eating lunch with his dad, Stiles would simply walk across the street to the park, having roughly two and a half hours left to kill before his next class. He knew from experience that if he went home to relax before class, he would inevitably fall asleep and skip his class altogether.

It was a fate he would rather avoid since his dad wasn’t spending thousands of dollars for him to nap. So instead, he would bring a book or a journal or a pair of headphones with him over to the park to help him pass the time until his next class.

His favorite spot was smack dab in the middle of the park, by the huge stone fountain that rose high above the surrounding rose bushes. Rainbows often flashed in the mist from the cascading water that bubbled placidly like some river out in the preserve, only serving to amplify the paradise-like feel of the fountain.

He would spend hours by the fountain, either sitting on the stone lip of the fountain or a bench nearby, letting the sound of the rushing water calm him down. To help the time pass more quickly, he would doodle in the margins of his psychology notebooks or listen to one of his various study playlists as he basked in the warm of the spring sun.

But as much as he loved the park itself and the fountain that had become his go-to spot for stress relief, there was only one reason why he kept coming back every day, even when he didn’t have any classes. That distinct honor was one model gorgeous man whom Stiles only knew by the moniker he had given him: Hot Jogger.

It had taken nearly thirty minutes after the battle with Los Muertos for Soldier: 76 to finally collapse in the Dorado alleyway.

Clearly, he had known it was only a matter of time before he would succumb to the injuries he had sustained. That’s why he had concentrated on taking an aimless, twisting path through the Mexican city, avoiding major thoroughfares. Generally he kept moving south - which must have been where he had left whatever mode of transportation he had used to get there - but then, near an industrial scrapyard, his knees buckled. One arm against a building wall, the other clutching the heavy pulse rifle. Of course that would be important to him, but soon it fell with a clatter as he gripped his side, where he had taken the brunt of the grenade blast.

Idiot, Reaper thought. The child had foolishly put herself in danger, had lingered too long, and then the rogue had hesitated in deciding what to do about it, waiting for the last possible moment, losing the gang and just barely rescuing the girl. Sloppy. Careless.

After a moment, it had become too much, and Soldier: 76 sagged to the ground in an unconscious pile.

“As far as Simon knew, everyone was born with a compass on their forearm, just below the wrist. Some of them were colored with swirling patterns, some of them were plain, some of them looked ancient and no one knew why, they just accepted it.”

Raphael thinks that he might have given up multiple times, if it wasn’t for the words marked on his skin.Simon thinks that his soulmate must hate him. The words on his wrist do give off a certain unpleasant vibe.

“Yes,” Simon snaps, “Yes, Clary, my number is 71. It’s right there,” he waves her wrist around, a little too aggressively, so it’s actually impossible to read. “The seven and the one. 71. My soulmate’s going to be 71 when we meet.”

Simon, well, he has the most unusual / off the beaten path twist of words etched across his ribs that he’s ever heard of. The font is an elegant black crawl with perfectly dainty pretty loops and swirls, and it says “Dios, I’m going to eat you if you don’t shut up!”

The oasis of the woods had always been a place Ethan and I found ourselves at any given time of the year. We grew up exploring everything inside, from the river that ran right through the middle, and even right down to its secret hiding spots. It was like time was altered there when we would spend hours losing ourselves within its twisting paths and shaded greenery. It was the place we first met, 10 year olds full of immaturity and energy. It was also the first place Ethan ever kissed me, short but sweet and much unlike the kisses we shared now. And when he’d dragged me there at 20 years old, I’d thought we’d grown a little too old for it; that was until we spent the day dirt biking and cliff jumping, just before the sunset and he had asked me to marry him.

It seemed that these woods would always be the place for our most intimate and special moments, so I figured now was as good a time as any. It was muggy and hot, the middle of June, and even the shade couldn’t keep my shirt from sticking to my back like a second skin. I felt so nauseous and woozy, politely declining to ride the dirt bike clutching to Ethan’s back, although he did look almost too good to say no to. He knew that, even at 22 years old, wearing a fucking snapback was an automatic turn on for me. Sometimes I think he did it just to spite me.
I clutched the college lined notebook paper in my hand as I maneuvered around fallen branches and patches of poison ivy. They’d somehow rangled me into filming with them, a stupid game of two truths and a lie, not to mention I’m horrible at lying. The loser would be sleeping in the woods, so I was banking on my final round to crush them. No one would see it coming, and even I hadn’t seen it coming when I’d learned the truth.